1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to cleaning devices provided in image forming apparatuses such as copying machines, printers, and facsimile machines, and image forming apparatuses provided with the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an image forming apparatus is provided with an image bearing member, and a toner image formed on an image forming surface of the image bearing member is transferred to a sheet at a transfer nip portion. There has been a known cleaning device which performs a cleaning processing of removing toners remaining on the image forming surface after the transfer processing is performed (for example, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2002-132059, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2006-184885).
In this device, a cleaning brush is so provided as to be capable of coming in contact with or separating apart from an image forming surface. After a toner image is transferred to a sheet, the cleaning brush comes in contact with the image forming surface, so that the image forming surface is cleaned.
According to the above-described conventional technology, the image forming surface is cleaned only after the toner image is transferred to the sheet. Accordingly, frequency in cleaning the image forming surface is small, so that it causes a problem that favorable image quality cannot be maintained.